Allan Fish Online Festival: Final Day – “You Were Like a Wild Chrysanthemum” and “The Outcast”

by Sam Juliano

Dearest Allan:

It has been almost ten months since you departed this earthly realm.  Lucille and I won’t ever forget the last time we spoke, which was by phone two days before you left us on August 29, 2016.  You struggled to speak, but you moved us to the core of our beings with your achingly emotional regard for our eleven year relationship.  Though we saw each other on three occasions, adding up to sixty-seven days in each other’s company over that all-too-brief period, our friendship was fueled by daily correspondence and more marathon phone calls than I have had with any person during my lifetime.  I can’t remember any other person I fought with more regularly nor can I even fathom the vitriolic nature of some e mails we shared in a chain with fellow friends from Brooklyn and Chicago.  Those contentious rows almost always ended with phone conversations initiated by you, with peace branches being accepted on both ends.  I fondly recall the first time we ever spoke on the phone back in 2005, when I recklessly dialed your Kendal number and spoke with you nearly four hours, erroneously thinking I had unlimited time.  I took an eight-hundred and forty dollar hit that day, one that had you and your mum deeply mortified over the colossal gaffe.  As you recall you felt so bad over it that you sent me one-hundred and fifty dollars worth of DVDs to ease the pain, but that now laughable baptism under fire led to more Sunday afternoon conversations than I can remotely recall.  Hence, when you told Lucille that she, I and our family “made my life worth living” you immediately and for all time erased all the acrimony and malice, validating in those tearfully impassioned words “what I say about someone is one thing, what I feel about him is another.”  Just two months before you shattered us with your untimely adieu, you consoled me on the phone after the tragic passing of my brother Joe’s oldest son at age thirty-six.  I shared my eulogy of him with you and you did all you could, even monitoring my own state of grief with Lucille.  Though you yourself began to have seizures at that time -a short while after the dreaded cancer had returned- you did all you could from 3,000 miles away to ease my pain.  You had all that you could handle and them some, yet you had something there left for me.  Whatever time I have left, I won’t ever forget your deepest concern for a friend at a time when your own life was hanging in the balance.  Of course, I won’t likewise ever lose sight of the fact that when I was given the news of Brian’s sudden death (drug related) I was driving on a highway about an hour west of my home.  I jerked the steering wheel and pulled to the side of the road overcome by grief.  The very first thing I did before even allowing such catastrophic news to settle in was to reach you on FB message to appraise you of this horrific event.

Such was the nature of daily communication that as you will fondly recall was in the neighborhood of at least a dozen back and forth e mails, new release announcements, links to other sites and reviews and general banter that often concerned personal matters, finances and family related issues.  Our shared site contains many priceless exchanges, and there isn’t  anything I wouldn’t do to have you back as the yang to my ying.  Heck I just heard over the last few days that you told one of our mutual friends that there was a time you’d have to “rethink our friendship” as a result of my being generally unimpressed by the television show The Wire.  That quip made me think of when you thought I deserved life imprisonment for championing  Franco Zeffirelli’s Brother Sun Sister Moon and Bruce Beresford’s Driving Miss Daisy.  Those were precious exchanges, and I tear up just reliving them.

But I know you were taken from us for a specific reason.  You had done your job here, and are now bringing the cinema to people who left their earthly origins much too soon, much as you did.  After all your job was to write a film encyclopedia for use by newbies and those expanding their horizons.  Now you have others to teach, to spread the word, to delineate what is exceptional and what is disposable.  As always your persuasiveness is irresistible, a kind of pitch like the one Ed Wynn gave to Mr. Death in The Twilight Zone’s season one gem “One For the Angels.”  When Wynn departed he brought along his box of goodies so he could make pitches to those in heaven, much as your transported file copies of your book are probably all the rage in the movie paradise not too far beyond the pearly gates.  The old phrase “I wish I were a fly on the wall” applies to me as I try to surmise what your lectures are entailing.  Though I quite understand and respect that this is a one way correspondence – you are allowed to read it but cannot respond before the point of departure for others, I have still come to speculate how’d you’d respond to new releases based on your prior assessment of works bearing thematic or stylistic similarities.  I have you down for 3.5 for La La Land, 4.5 for Moonlight, 3.5 for Fences, 4.5 for Indignation, 3.0 for Jackie and the top 5.0 for Manchester for the Sea.  If like you I am fortunate enough to get up there at some point, I would like to compare notes on these and many other releases both old and new.  I am sure you are celebrating over the Arrow blu ray release of the long-unavailable Rainer Warner Fassbinder television release, Eight Hours Don’t Make A Day.  I know that you and Jamie Uhler had many discussions about it, but were doubtful it would ever experience the light of day for cinephiles.  But late in July it will become a reality, following in the paths of your beloved Yoshida, Rivette and Fassbinder sets.

In late June of 2016, you told me in no uncertain terms that “your ass is mine” for the next several months.  Though you were thinking that time period would extend considerably longer, you made good on your intent, assisted by my unwavering commitment to your directives.  With your guidance and daily back and forths you will happily remember that I watched nearly 150 films in that two months stretch, which for me was record breaking.  Lucille sometimes mentions that she vividly remembers the many nights we compared notes on those viewings at your behest, and how on a few instances I watched stuff straight through till the morning rays came filtering through the glass panes in the bedroom.  Such was the case with that massive Alan Clarke at the BBC – Dissent and Disruption, which I completed over five days and nights.  It remains my friend, one of the most rewarding film watching projects I have ever embarked on and finished in my lifetime.  Of course as you will recollect you succeeded in convincing me to part with about $140 to order it on amazon.co.uk.  Definitely one of my best purchases ever.  Yet, the country where most of the films were made in that amazingly prolific final run was your venerated Japan.  About a year or so before you passed away you declared without reservation that the Land of the Rising Sun owned the greatest nationalist cinema, and that their greatest directors (Ozu, Mizoguchi, Yoshida, Kurosawa, Naruse, etc.) were among the most formidable worldwide.  Your passion for Japanese cinema was so acute, so comprehensive, so studied that you were able to enlist the help of your London contacts, various online sources (including the now dormant Cave of Forgotten Films) to burn copies for friends around the world, and to pave the way for some of us, myself included to follow suit.  This takes us to the crux of my homage to you my friend.  Once again with your dogged investigative instincts you found just the right e bay seller that fit the bill of one who offered solid product.   As you well know the seller was a Frenchman named Cyril Descans, though he apparently operated his on line store out of the United Kingdom.  I thought I’d interject here to let you know that Cyril felt so terrible when I informed him that you had moved on to another sphere to educate others.  He said you were such a brilliant and wonderful bloke, and that the world was so much poorer for your exit.  I know, I know.  You are no doubt vigorously shaking your head over my purchases from Cyril, saying in no uncertain terms, “Sam, you are an idiot to buy stuff from Cyril that I already sent you on DVDRs just for third rate covers!”  What’s that we talked about many times about the addiction to packaging?  Alas Alan, as it turns out now, numerous films you acquired are now unavailable on the online sites.  Cave was legally removed, much to the chagrin of the ever-generous proprietor the young man Jon Whitehead, and for some film connoisseurs the only way to go is to Cyril on e bay for the present time anyway.

Let me guess at what you are thinking to yourself.  “Sam, you philistine, why are you diverting from the rules of this homage to me?  You are supposed to be offering online links so everyone can enjoy the films here and now.  You are not supposed to be tempting people to spend money!”   Well, my friend, in all the years I knew you and shared in the art of discovery, there were more than just a few instances where going the e bay route was the only way, due to rights issues.  (Heck, if it weren’t for e bay, I would have never met you).  Even that open window was always in danger of shutting down, though through what seems like incredible luck, Cyril is still selling.  You will remember that I purchased six titles from him, beautifully packaged in black and white covers to match how they were filmed:  Until We Meet Again (Tadashi Imai), Punishment Room (Kon Ichikawa), The Ball at the Anjo House (Kozaburo Yoshimura) Happiness of Us Alone (Zenzo Matsuyama) and the two films I am sponsoring in my tribute to you, the staggering masterpieces You Were Like A Wild Chrysanthemum (Keisuke Kinoshita) and The Outcast (Kon Ichikawa).  Let’s see, you are saying now “Ha, I could have called those a mile away!  You are so predictable!”  Aye my friend, I can’t dispute that.  Both films made me cry, and stand as two of the most achingly humanist works in all of the Japanese cinema, and for me among the very greatest of all.  They define the word essential, and like so many of the other humanist works you lauded they are impossible to shake, even months down the time.  They also evoke our memory of you and how life is such a fleeting proposition.  Both are available from Cyril for around $15 US each plus a few dollars for shipping.

Pastoral lyricism reigns supreme in You Were Like A Wild Chrysanthemum, an old man (Chishu Ryu), is a passenger being rowed up river to the place of his youth.  “Life is a short dream” he muses.  The barren, rocky shore where he disembarks, a kind of no-man’s land, and the house to which he walks, seemingly inhabited by ghosts.  Life in this film is something framed by memory tiny figures etched into a cameo, moving fervently about a glistening world of cotton and chrysanthemums, captured in long-shot and punctuated by an old man’s voice over.  Kinoshita sustains this indelible mood throughout the film, aided by an oval-shaped mask, typically associated with the silent cinema.  The film is essentially a flashback of the most passionate of love affairs, negotiated by horizontal pans, shadows, and the juxtaposition of sun and rain.  Sadness intrudes overwhelmingly.

The 1906 novel Hakai was regarded as a pioneering piece of social realism that investigated the controversial issue of the “burakumim”, the descendants of feudal era untouchables who remained on the very lowest rung of the Japanese caste system, subject to virulent prejudice and virtual apartheid.  The great Japanese director Kon Ichikawa adapted the novel for The Outcast, which by any barometer of measurement must be seen as one of his finest and most deeply moving masterpieces.  The protagonist, Ushimatsu, refuses to accept his lot in life, and bound by his father’s dying wish that he conceal his lowly beginnings, takes a job as a teacher in a regular school.  Still, the example of a famous burakumin writer and activist makes him consider that his people’s lot will not be improved by such subterfuge, causing him to become consumed by a desire to confess his true identity.  One dramatic scene in the classroom must surely rank as one of the most powerful in all of the Japanese cinema.  Brooding black and white camerawork underscores this wrenching, agonizing dilemma.  Both films are available from Cyril, but perhaps with some dogged further investigation that can still be found.  But Cyril’s prints for both are immaculate:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/YOU-WERE-LIKE-A-WILD-CHRYSANTHEMUM-Keisuke-Kinoshita-1960-rare-DVD-/322519534874?hash=item4b17a98d1a:g:XykAAOSw3utY7CVp

http://www.ebay.com/itm/THE-OUTCAST-aka-HAKAI-Kon-Ichikawa-1962-English-subtitles-rare-DVD-/322509808857?hash=item4b171524d9:g:YHMAAOSwY3BZELeM

Oh Allan, I so do dearly miss our daily chats, your dogged research, even your barbed criticisms.  I keep thinking you are away on a vacation, and that one day, somewhere we will meet again at an earthly locale.  Even when I flew over with the girls to attend the unthinkable, I believed it was a surreal venture.  I am expecting any day to see that glorious “acf” e mail address in my box.  “Fooey” you say, I know.  God how much we adored you and will till the end of our days.  There isn’t a day that goes by that we don’t think of you.

Love,

Sam

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